South Atlantic League Wrap

Seeing all 14 teams in the South Atlantic League this summer was a challenging but rewarding adventure. 

It was a little more costly than I would have guessed. Even midweek tickets are not cheap at many venues - the very best deal was a web Wednesday deal in Hickory for $6 right behind home plate. Most parks averaged $10 or so down the baselines. It's a good value, and you get more ambience for your buck at some parks than others.

I was struck by how the league ranges from urban to rural and from older stadiums to new. The new parks are mostly in the ten-year-old range, but the oldest ones and from a century ago. It's a nice spectrum. 



The costs also include travel expenses -- even though several parks are within driving range of Charlotte without needing hotels, there are still several that require a good bit of planning (I'm pointing at you, Delmarva and Lakewood!). 

I would go out of my way again to visit these: Greensboro (if only for the bat dogs!), Kannapolis (such a short drive for us in Charlotte and such a great park!), Charleston (but no beer shakes), West Virginia (also in Charleston but the other one), and I never would have believed it four months ago - Hagerstown (it's still everything a ballpark should be). 

Since we saw him last, Kannapolis catcher Jeremy Dowdy (Raleigh Wakefield, Appalachian State), has been promoted to the Class AA Birmingham Barons. Also, Crawdads RHP Josh McElwee was promoted to the Class A+ Myrtle Beach Pelicans. 


It's been fun, but I'm very much looking forward to next summer's Carolina League slate - they have only eight teams!

My mom, Julie Ritterskamp, was able to visit all but two of the Sally League teams with me. Here are her reflections.

Mom's Take

I was fortunate enough to be able to travel with Ellyn on her tour of the Sally League baseball teams' summer games. If I had known I was going to miss only two stops, Rome, Ga., and Augusta, Ga., I would have tried to make sure I saw them all. But the twelve games I did get to were amazing, fun, and very much family oriented. Any baseball game at this level is an inexpensive way to enjoy a summer evening.  Here are a few highlights, from my point of view:

Best national anthem: Krystal Marshall Kasten, Charleston RiverDogs

Most unbelievable drive: Richmond, Va., to Lakewood, N.J.: $22 in tolls, but worth the drive.

Most eye-catching stadium decoration: Three huge lifeguard chairs around the outfield in Lakewood, N.J. - people can actually climb up and sit on them!

Most interesting parking lot attraction: Kannapolis, N.C. - One of Dale Earnhardt's cars that you can touch and get your picture made with.

Most old-fashioned baseball stadium feeling:  Hagerstown, Md. 

Best example of wretched excess in a food item: S'mores panini at Savannah - the thing would have fed six people!

Most fun mascot: Charleston, W.V. This guy interacted with kids and families in a wonderful way. This stadium also has the most fun staff and attendees. The Toastman alone is worth a trip.

Stadium where we could have gotten in for free: Asheville, N.C. We won't tell you how, but it involved climbing a high hill ... we paid, of course!

Best overall stadium experience: Greensboro, N.C. The three charming bat dogs, Miss Babe Ruth, Miss Lulu Gehrig, and Master Yogi Berra, make any game fun. I took more people back twice, just to see the dogs. The last time a very helpful employee, Tim, made sure that my request was honored to be seated where we could see the dogs the best, and the kids I brought from Charlotte have three new best buddies. 

Thanks go out to friends in Richmond, Va., who let us make their home our base for visiting three stadiums. At the Salisbury, Md., venue, we were joined by a high school friend we had not seen in many years. 


In Lexington, KY,  we visited the Woodford Reserve and picked up a bottle of their finest double oak bourbon, a gift for a friend. Driving around that area was just lovely with lots of horse pastures. 

I count myself lucky that my daughter looks on me as a suitable traveling companion, and that my husband Jack does not mind me leaving him with the house and kitties. It has been a super summer!

Greenville's not a bad Drive

Observations from Greenville, S.C.

Greenville didn’t disappoint in our final stop of the season in the South Atlantic League. It was the third-hottest game of our summer tour - Savannah was 97 degrees and Charleston 92 in early July - but you expect that. We were just glad the rain held off.

Highlights:

We parked for free on the other side of Falls Park and walked through it. This is a must. The waterfalls are just breath-taking for a downtown setting. There is a free shuttle for before and after the game, but ride it on the way back, at night. Walk through the park (be careful on the first set of stone steps, though!).

The story is that the Drive are so-named because of the nearby BMW plant. It may be the weakest name of the league.

There seemed to be even more youngsters at this game than any other we saw all season, especially for a night game. There was an infant race between innings to promote a local college that was pretty embarrassing, but sitting on the left-field grass provided lots of kid-watching excitement the rest of the game.

The grass seating brought another a big chuckle when a loud song stopped unexpectedly between innings and a nearby fan was in the middle of blurting out, “Let’s go home and smoke a blunt!”

The Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum across the street is open from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.on Saturdays.

The field is built to the same specs as Fenway Park, though the Green Monster is seven feet shorter to allow condo owners to see the field. Those owners on terraces in center field got to scrap for a home run ball.

Drive Carolinas Connections

Pitcher Ty Buttrey, Providence High

Pitcher Jamie Callahan, Dillon (S.C.) High

No power outage here

Observations from the West Virginia Power

Best team store name so far - the Power Outlet. 

Downtown Charleston, W.V., is a great location for a Class A-level ballpark. There is a high hill nearby with a cemetery overlooking the field. A hospital next door means plenty of foot traffic that made us feel safe about our car being parked at a meter a few blocks from the park. Warehouses windows across the street from left make inviting home run targets.

The logos are baseballs with pirate hats and eyepatches, to salute the parent Pittsburgh Pirates. A previous Charleston team was named the Charlies, so the mascot is Chuck the Pirate. 

Besides the five teams close to Charlotte, this is another close one, where it's not out of the question to drive straight up I-77 for a game and come back without having to pay to spend the night. A day game would be very easy, with an early start.

Power's Carolinas Connections

3B Chris Diaz, N.C. State

Everything is StacheTastic in Lexington, Ky.

Observations from the Lexington Legends

The mascot is Big L, a hefty fella with bats crossed over his shoulders and an enormous handlebar mustache. The StacheTastic theme is everywhere.

Tuesdays feature 37-cent hot dogs, sponsored by the Ford F-150, which they say has been the top-selling pickup truck for 37 straight years. Pretty cheap dinner.

Section 203 was a great view and angle for $10, but it took a few innings to identify a strange sound every 90 seconds or so - it turned out to be the rotating advertising sign in front of the section.

It was hard to take seriously a promotion for Hearing Loss Awareness night a few days after our visit that also included fireworks. Why not go ahead and destroy what's left of folks' hearing?

Legends' Carolinas Connections

Pitcher Matt Tenuta, Apex High (son of Jon Tenuta, Virginia defensive coordinator. He was also the defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach at North Carolina in 2001 and was the linebackers coach at N.C. State from 2010-12. 

Worth the drive to the Eastern Shore

Observations from Delmarva

This is a great park in one of the league's more remote locations. As the crow flies, it's 165 miles from Richmond (our home base for a trip to see the league's northernmost three teams - thanks, friends!), but Chesapeake Bay prevents that sort of direct path. Our drive was five hours from Richmond by the northern route (slowed by Annapolis rush hour) and more than four hours by the southern route (slowed by overnight bay tunnel construction). It would have been great to pair this visit with Lakewood N.J., but our schedule and the games didn't match up that way.

The fellow behind us sounded exactly like Wilford Brimley.

Shorebirds starter Luis Gonzalez (6-0 in 12 starts) had a nice outing, throwing seven strikeouts in six shutout innings in a 4-0 win Wednesday against Lakewood.

Food highlight: The Swamp Dog, a spicy sausage with shrimp and grits on top.

Shorebirds' Carolinas Connections

Pitcher Hunter Harvey - Catawba Bandys High (son of Bryan Harvey, brother of Kris Harvey)
Pitcher John McLeod - Wake Forest (on disabled list)

Hagerstown: This place still smells like a ballpark

Observations from Hagerstown

Municipal Stadium was built in 1930, putting it in the same category as Asheville and Savannah in this league for elderly stadiums. This one has a great feel to it -- the concessions were simple and the crowd much more, well, non-urban than I'd expected, but all in a good way. The atmosphere is only improved by the manual scoreboard with three guys we could watch changing the numbers, the absence of a radar report or even clock, and yes, the smell of hunks of meat being grilled near the gate. It all added up to a great experience. The left-field picnic area is just steps away from the visiting team's warm-up area -- I had a nice eye-catching moment with a reserve outfielder before the game, and a couple of kids got easy foul balls during the game.

Former Clemson catcher Spencer Kieboom made a great play at the plate to end a scoring threat in the sixth inning of an 8-4 win on Tuesday. 

Retired jersey numbers: 42 Jackie Robinson, 24 Willie Mays, 50 John Henry Moss (commissioner of current and previous incarnations of the Sally League for 50 years).

The Suns are pretty proud of Bryce Harper's 72 games during the 2011 season in Hagerstown: .318 average, 14 home runs, 46 RBIs. 

Suns' Carolinas Connections

Catcher Spencer Kieboom - Clemson
1B Carlos Lopez - Wake Forest
Utility player John Wooten - East Carolina and Goldsboro's Eastern Wayne High. Wooten was called up to the Carolina League's Class A+ Potomac team on July 28.

The Sally League's northernmost stop

Observations from Lakewood, N.J.

A Monday night game sold very well with Gaylord Perry in the house to throw out the first pitch and sign autographs.

Retired jerseys: Ryan Howard (29) and Cole Hamels (19)

The mascot is not any sort of creature with claws, as we'd expected (but which might have scared  kids), but a critter named Buster who is not any particular sort of animal, just like the major league club's Philie Phanatic.

Cool feature: 12-foot beach chairs in the outfield grass seating areas (use at your own risk).

Fans here are no better than Southerners at waiting until the end of an inning (or even an at-bat) to leave for the concession stand.

Highlight: about six service dogs in training, learning how to behave in crowds.

Superlative: The largest scoreboard in the league I've seen so far (three parks to go).

BlueClaws Carolinas Connections

None

Savannah: Historic Grayson Stadium has character like crazy

OBSERVATIONS FROM SAVANNAH, GA. 

Character usually is a good thing but not always ... a park where general admission seats are the best ones gives me pause. 

We loved the Sand Gnats' stadium setting in a large city park (we got in some walking before the game) and loved the idea of it being at one of the nation's oldest functioning ballparks (they fight with Asheville among others for the distinction). But our seating experience was less than great, for a while.

Our box seats were close behind home plate even though the map had showed them closer to first base (our preferred angle). My mom's seat was not fastened securely into the concrete. We moved to the general admission area near Landshark Landing and had a great time from then on.

The netting spans just about all of the seating areas so this is a difficult place to catch a foul ball. But the angles are so odd management has to put up all of this netting or they would lose a fan every night.

The daytime high was 97 or so, but enormous ceiling fans in the covered areas keep spectators from rioting. We also were told we could ask for bug spray from fan services, but it never came to that. There is a reason the team is named the Sand Gnats ...

Food item in the Wretched Excess category: the S'mores Panini. There was Nutella involved, plus chocolate syrup on top. I can't even ...

Sand Gnats Carolinas Connections

Outfielder Champ Stuart, Brevard College

Charleston let the dogs out

Observations from Charleston

Since Charleston is the RiverDogs, this is the only South Atlantic League entrant allowed to use "Who Let the Dogs Out?" as long as it is judicious about it, which is is. We heard it once for a scoring play during an early inning, and again during a thrilling bottom-of-the-ninth sequence resulting in a win. Gosuke Katoh singled and advanced on a bunt by Michael O'Neill, then he slid around a tag at home after a line drive by Mark Payton. Payton was in the game only as a replacement for Tyler Wade, who was ejected after being called out on an attempted steal in during the eighth inning. O'Neill had his own big moment to open the game with a home run.

Temperatures were in the high 80s or low 90s for a recent start of a night game, but the breeze off the Ashley River keeps things bearable at Joe P. Riley Stadium (“The Joe”). The seagulls add a fun obstacle - though none were hit with batted balls, the possiblity kept us all on high alert.

This is the first of seven parks I've visited in the league with a keyhole - a graded dirt area between the plate area and the mound. One of these showed up recently in the World Series, and we confirmed there were only two in the major leagues at the time.

RiverDogs Carolinas Connections

Pitcher Rookie Davis, Sneads Ferry, N.C.

Pitcher Eric Ruth, Winthrop

Any excuse to visit Asheville is a good one

Next up on our tour of the South Atlantic League: the Asheville Tourists.

Observations from McCormick Field

Arrive early and wander around the Grove Park Inn, back up Charlotte Street on the other side of I-240. There is an amazing waterfall sequence, and you get free parking for the first three hours.

If you are still early, walk up -- seriously, straight up, altitudewise -- Buchanan Street beside the front entrance, go left on White Fawn Drive to a trail head to Beaucatcher Greenway. The path is cool and pleasant, though there are some mosquito critters. After you climb over a fallen tree, there is a trail back down to the left that leads to the employee parking lot for the stadium. Go up to the parking lot entrance to get back to the stadium front.

Go on Doggies at the Diamond night. I bet we saw 30 dogs, of all sizes and colors. The coolest was a huge white dog -- unknown breed -- with sunglasses pushed back on his forehead. Certain he weighed 180 lbs., we almost asked to ride him out to the parking lot. There was also a Newfoundland who accepted all the attention gracefully. Many of the dogs gathered to argue and play in the general admission area -- concrete benches where folks make their own nests with blankets and lawn chairs.

Lots of local beers available, plus there are the deep-fried Oreos and deep-fried Moon pies.

No Carolinas Connections - but several players on this team stood out as not fitting the Sally League mold of 19-year-olds who are 6-foot-2, 170 lbs. The Tourists have some older, bigger players. It was nice not to worry about their nutrition like I have some others. I felt sorry for the lefties, though -- they have a 36-foot fence in right, though it's only 297 feet from the plate. Still, not many dingers are going over that baby.

Drowned by the deluge

Observations from Rome, Ga.

The spicy alfredo sauce at the Bella Rosa Grill in the parking lot is worth the drive 40 miles north of Atlanta and 25 miles west.

The Braves' unique food offering: fried bologna sandwich at Bubba's BBQ Barn.

They charge $3 for programs, unlike most parks.

It was really all about this storm that rolled in twenty minutes before first pitch and drowned all of northwest Georgia (photo courtesy of Dalya Adams).

Braves Carolinas Connections

Pitcher Tyler Brosius - Waynesville, N.C. (Tuscola High)

Pitcher Colby Holmes - Conway (S.C.) High and South Carolina

Pitcher Matt Marksberry - Campbell

Augusta: Go to see the GreenJackets, stay for the pecan pie

Observations from Augusta, Ga.

Augusta isn't the southernmost team in the South Atlantic League, but it's the only one I've been to so far that serves pecan pie, so it may be the SouthernMost.

The 2013 (inaugural) Hall of Fame is Pablo Sandoval (San Francisco's Kung-Fu Panda) and Tim Wakefield, who played infield for Augusta and was advised he'd never get past Class AA, so he switching to pitching and developed a remarkable knuckleball.

$13 gets you a seat very close to the action, and with no parking fee, it's comparable to the other parks.

Baseball bingo is much harder than the usual sort: you check off boxes for home players achieving such feats as bunts, touching the warning track, and putouts. 

The less said about the fifth inning's grounds crew "Macarena," the better.

GreenJackets Carolinas Connections

Pitcher Jake Smith is from North Augusta, S.C. (his parents come across the river to attend most home games) and he also played at Campbell

Second baseman Will Callaway is from Taylors, S.C., and played at Appalachian State

Three Dog Night in Greensboro

Observations from Greensboro

The Grasshoppers have a magnificent park in downtown Greensboro, with a truly endearing mascot named Guilford. But it was three labrador retrievers who caught nearly all of our attention on Friday night: Miss Babe Ruth, Miss Lou Lou Gehrig, and Master Yogi Berra.

Miss Babe Ruth is in likely her final season as a bat retriever for the Hoppers. She worked several innings at our game, either retrieving bats for the home team or delivering balls to the home plate umpire between innings (safely dry in a bucket). We rooted for Hoppers to get hits just so we could see her do her thing (hitters brought their own bats back to the dugout if they struck out).

Yogi's big moment was between innings when he retrieved a baseball launched into the outfield by one of those T-shirt cannons.

The other animal excitement came on the scoreboard. During rally moments, a video showed a chicken jumping several inches in the air, over and over. We were stumped for a few innings but finally realized it was A Hopper, as is most everything at the park. The usher said it does not have a name, so we proposed Hedda the Hopper.

Friday's game went crazy fast, finishing nine innings in 2:20. Even the extra innings (the game went 12) still had folks out close to 10 p.m. A base-running choice in the bottom of the ninth prevented a chance at a Hoppers win, and instead the game stayed tied until the 4-run boom in the top of the 12th.

This park (in its tenth season) leads the list of those I'll visit again. Maybe next time the family in front of us will stand up for their frequent concessions visits between innings instead of during at-bats …

Hoppers Carolinas Connections

Outfielder Kentrell Dewitt - Green Sea (S.C.) Floyds High and Southeastern Community College (Whiteville, N.C.)
Pitcher Josh Easley - N.C. State
Pitcher Brad Mincey - East Carolina
Pitcher Sean Townsley - High Point University

Kannapolis team might not intimidate but park shines

Tuesday's score was Hickory 10, Kannapolis 3, but a game with 13 runs and five errors by the hosts won't get my attention.

What did get my attention was a broken bat from the Intimidators' Jacob Morris that flew into our section during the first inning. The man sitting behind me snagged the barrel and gave it to me, and batting coach Rob Sasser offered the handle from the dugout. So now I have a bat used by a professional baseball player. What's the big deal, right? 

It represents talent, and it makes me want to follow Harris'  career. There is something about Class A ball that makes us root for these underdogs, many of whom will never see the majors but most of whom do love the game enough to travel half the year. They live four and five to an apartment just to be able to pay the rent, and live in places where landlords won't rent month-to-month … and all of that. It's a life we might envy on one level, but we mostly don't envy the low pay and the tedium and the hard work parts of it. 

Highlights from Kannapolis

A Chevy chassis with No. 3 artwork sits at the park's entrance, in memory of Dale Earnhardt, whose purchase of a share of the team in 2000 sparked a name change from the Piedmont Boll Weevils to the Intimidators (chosen by a fan vote).

Three jersey numbers are retired at this park: 50, 3, and 42. Earnhardt was No. 3 and Jackie Robinson No. 42, but I was stumped on No. 50. Turns out it was for John Henry Moss, who was president for 50 years of what is now the South Atlantic League. Every team in the league has retired it.

Mark your calendar: Bark in the Park is June 1. This is a gorgeous park and the dogs will love it.

Bingo drew more boos than cheers. At least no one forgot about the free space.

I met a player's parent. Starting pitcher Tyler Barnette's mom was in my section. We sympathized when he struggled to adjust to the plate umpire's strike zone, as did every pitcher.

Loved hearing Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" after a steal.

The Hickory lineup included Joe Jackson, who was batting .412 coming into the game. He's from Greenville, S.C., and The Citadel, and is the great-great-great-nephew of Shoeless Joe Jackson, who died in Greenville in 1951.

Kannapolis Carolinas Connections

Pitcher Tyler Barnett - Hickory High, UNC Charlotte
Pitcher David Putman - Duke
Catcher Jeremy Dowdy - Raleigh Wakefield, Appalachian State

Rolled Hickory: First stop in a tour of the Sally League

The host Crawdads made it interesting late but fell 4-2 Wednesday night to the Hagerstown Suns.

Highlights

Crawdads starter Akeem Bostick caught my eye a day before the game. I was looking for players from the Carolinas on the roster, and he's one of four (all pitchers, see below). Bostick signed out of high school with the Texas Rangers for a nice bonus, and went 4-1 in rookie league ball.

He went 5 1/3 innings Wednesday, giving up six hits but mostly staying out of trouble for only one run. He is very quick to be ready to throw the next pitch, which I loved, and his velocity was nice.

I was lucky to meet his mom on the way out, and told her I'll be watching his progress over the next few years. I think he will become an even better pitcher as he fills out and puts in the repetitions (as is true for most of us!).

It's fun to be at a game where there are so few fans in attendance (513 official but we saw about half that many) that we could hear everything the players said to each other.

Crawdads right fielder Nomar Gazara didn't earn points in our group - he bobbled a ball in the field and failed to back up a throw to first on a bunt that could have been costly. The bunt was ruled foul after the runner reached second, but Gazara was on our bad list.

We chuckled at the announcement during the second inning that "the carousel is now open." Part of the charm of a Class A ball park is that you get to ride a merry-go-round.

Crawdads Carolinas connections

Akeem Bostick - West Florence (S.C.) High
Josh McElwee - Newberry College and Andrews (S.C.) High
Ryne Slack - Spartanburg Methodist and Ninety Six (S.C.) High
Tyler Smith - USC Sumter and Sumter (S.C.) High

Seeing all of the Sally League

In the summer of 2013, I visited my final four home parks of all 30 Major League Baseball teams. This summer, I'll be attending a game at every South Atlantic League home field.

I live in Charlotte, so almost half the parks are drivable within a few hours. Several others will be road trips that combine 2-3 teams. Fourteen teams in one summer should be doable, though the Sally League is more spread out than I first realized: it stretches from three Georgia teams to three teams in the NJ-Maryland area. 

The combinations: 

The Peach State: Augusta GreenJackets and Rome Braves

The coast: Charleston RiverDogs and Savannah Sand Gnats

Charlotte-drivable: Hickory Crawdads, Kannapolis Intimidators, Greenville (S.C.) Drive, Asheville Tourists, Greensboro Grasshoppers

The northern trio: Hagerstown (Maryland) Suns, Lakewood (N.J.) BlueClaws, Delmarva Shorebirds (Salisbury, Maryland)

The western swing: West Virgina Power and Lexington (Kentucky) Legends

First up: Hickory on Wed., May 7